Now that we’ve learned some modifiers I can start teaching you about where else to use them, apart from in relative clauses. In a previous lesson we learned that you can use the present modifier to make sentences such as, ‘the boy who sings in Japanese’ 일번어로 노래 하는 남자 and ‘the girl who goes to school in a red car’. 빨간 차로 학교에 가는 여자.

Now we are going to learn how to use these structures to create sentences about our opinion.

We should be aware by now that Korean has a very formal structure and expressing things like opinion and how other people feel are somewhat crass and rude in normal society. If you look up ‘think’ in the dictionary you will find: ‘saenggak hada’ [pronounced: saeng-ga k’ada]. If you went around in Korean saying, I think he’s intelligent’ kû-ga jijøgin saram, saengga k’aeyo 그가 지젹인 사람, 생각해요 This would not only be grammatically incorrect but also quite rude.

Expressing your opinion in Korean, particularly in public, must be more subtle. Koreans therefore use the phrase ‘it appears to me’ instead of ‘think’, but it translates into English the same.

Here’s how to form it:

Take the modifier of the verb you want (in past, present, even future) + køt kat’ayo

Examples: I think he goes jogging everyday / it appears that he goes jogging everyday

mae-il jogging-ûl hanûn køt kat’ayo 매일 족잉을 하는 것 같아요

Take a closer look at the Korean spelling. køt is spelled with an ‘s’ køs but is pronounced køt.

Further examples: (Just remember in each case that it can be translated as ‘I think that’ or ‘It appears that’ and the object could be ‘he/she/you/they etc.)